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Syracuse assesses new fees for owners of vacant properties

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Under an ordinance passed today by the Syracuse Common Council, owners of vacant structures like this one, shown in a file photo from January 2013, will have to pay fees to the city if they don't fix them up.
(Stephen D. Cannerelli | scannerelli@syracuse.com)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – The Common Council today unanimously approved stiff new fees for the owners of code-deficient vacant properties in Syracuse. Mayor Stephanie Miner proposed the fees in hopes of motivating the owners of roughly 1,850 vacant structures to either fix them up or sell them.

The “vacant property registry’’ approved today requires property owners to register their vacant buildings if the structures are not secured against entry or if they have at least one exterior code violation. For properties that are not rehabilitated within a year, the registration fee for a 1-3 family house escalates from $250 the first year to $1,000 for the fourth and subsequent years.

The new ordinance “is an important tool to help us combat absentee landlords and focus on improving code enforcement efforts across the city,’’ said Miner, who first proposed it during her State of the City Address in January.

But the president of a local landlords’ club said she doubts the vacant property registry will have much of an impact. “I don’t see how it’s going to help anything,’’ said Carlotta Brown, who owns rental properties in Syracuse and serves as president of the Real Estate Investors of Central New York.

The city already has the power to board up unsecured buildings and to charge the property owner for the cost, Brown pointed out. And the city already can take an owner to court to collect fines for code violations. The vacant property registry piles on another expense for the owners of distressed properties, Brown said.

“I think it’s kind of redundant,’’ she said. Brown predicted that few landlords would pay to register vacant properties, from which they derive no income.

But another Upstate city with a vacant property registry reports success. Albany, which adopted a registry in 2000, cut the number of vacant buildings from 1,750 in 2006 to 813 early this year, according to Jeffery Jamison, commissioner of buildings and regulatory compliance.

Jamison said Albany has successfully pressured financial institutions that own vacant properties or hold liens against them to comply with the requirement to maintain them. That keeps the properties from further deterioration, he said.

At least 10 NewYork cities, not counting Syracuse, have vacant property registries, as do cities elsewhere around the nation. The practice is common enough that specialized property management companies have sprung up to help banks comply with the requirements, Jamison said.

Corey Driscoll, Syracuse’s director of code enforcement, said many property owners were initially skeptical of the city’s 5-year-old rental registry, which requires the owners of one- or two-family rental properties to register them with the city. A property owners group filed a lawsuit in November challenging the law’s constitutionality.

But about 75 percent of property owners thus far have complied with requirements of the rental registry, Driscoll said. She said she expects most owners to comply with the vacant property registry, too. It takes effect July 1.
Contact Tim Knauss at tknauss@syracuse.com or 315-470-3023.